Diachronic change and pronoun status: Italian dative 'loro’
(2005) In Linguistics 43(6). p.1105-1130- Abstract
- From a historical perspective, personal pronouns in Romance languages display a tendency to undergo changes in syntactic status in a particular order, namely; strong > weak > clitic. This paper discusses the possible reasons behind the final step of this sequence of development, i.e. that from a weak form to clitic status. It will be argued that the external trigger for this kind of diachronic change has to be a morphophonological one; if a weak pronoun is morphophonologically reduced over time, language learners may at some point come to analyse the pronoun as a clitic. A number of syntactic properties are expected to change as a consequence of the switch from weak form to clitic. This view gives support to Cardinaletti &... (More)
- From a historical perspective, personal pronouns in Romance languages display a tendency to undergo changes in syntactic status in a particular order, namely; strong > weak > clitic. This paper discusses the possible reasons behind the final step of this sequence of development, i.e. that from a weak form to clitic status. It will be argued that the external trigger for this kind of diachronic change has to be a morphophonological one; if a weak pronoun is morphophonologically reduced over time, language learners may at some point come to analyse the pronoun as a clitic. A number of syntactic properties are expected to change as a consequence of the switch from weak form to clitic. This view gives support to Cardinaletti & Starke’s (1999) approach which argues for a principled link between the morphophonological make-up of pronouns and their syntactic status.
Furthermore, it is shown that the Italian dative pronoun loro ‘to-them’ during the 13th and 14th centuries underwent changes that corroborate the above hypothesis in an interesting way. Originally, loro was a weak pronoun but in some central Italian varieties, above all in the town of Siena, a reduced form lo’ emerged, which had clitic properties. Arguably, the phonological change preceded the syntactic one. For a period, both loro and lo’ are attested in rather free distribution. Later on however, the Sienese grammar makes a clear distinction between them, analysing lo’ as a dative clitic and loro as a strong pronoun. (Less)
Please use this url to cite or link to this publication:
https://lup.lub.lu.se/record/157891
- author
- Egerland, Verner LU
- organization
- publishing date
- 2005
- type
- Contribution to journal
- publication status
- published
- subject
- keywords
- syntactic change, weak pronouns, Italian, clitic pronouns
- in
- Linguistics
- volume
- 43
- issue
- 6
- pages
- 1105 - 1130
- publisher
- De Gruyter
- external identifiers
-
- wos:000234646600002
- scopus:34248691755
- ISSN
- 1613-396X
- DOI
- 10.1515/ling.2005.43.6.1105
- language
- English
- LU publication?
- yes
- id
- 53601639-6e28-4515-ad5f-f0e6215f63aa (old id 157891)
- date added to LUP
- 2016-04-01 11:59:03
- date last changed
- 2022-01-26 21:06:12
@article{53601639-6e28-4515-ad5f-f0e6215f63aa,
abstract = {{From a historical perspective, personal pronouns in Romance languages display a tendency to undergo changes in syntactic status in a particular order, namely; strong > weak > clitic. This paper discusses the possible reasons behind the final step of this sequence of development, i.e. that from a weak form to clitic status. It will be argued that the external trigger for this kind of diachronic change has to be a morphophonological one; if a weak pronoun is morphophonologically reduced over time, language learners may at some point come to analyse the pronoun as a clitic. A number of syntactic properties are expected to change as a consequence of the switch from weak form to clitic. This view gives support to Cardinaletti & Starke’s (1999) approach which argues for a principled link between the morphophonological make-up of pronouns and their syntactic status.<br/><br>
Furthermore, it is shown that the Italian dative pronoun loro ‘to-them’ during the 13th and 14th centuries underwent changes that corroborate the above hypothesis in an interesting way. Originally, loro was a weak pronoun but in some central Italian varieties, above all in the town of Siena, a reduced form lo’ emerged, which had clitic properties. Arguably, the phonological change preceded the syntactic one. For a period, both loro and lo’ are attested in rather free distribution. Later on however, the Sienese grammar makes a clear distinction between them, analysing lo’ as a dative clitic and loro as a strong pronoun.}},
author = {{Egerland, Verner}},
issn = {{1613-396X}},
keywords = {{syntactic change; weak pronouns; Italian; clitic pronouns}},
language = {{eng}},
number = {{6}},
pages = {{1105--1130}},
publisher = {{De Gruyter}},
series = {{Linguistics}},
title = {{Diachronic change and pronoun status: Italian dative 'loro’}},
url = {{http://dx.doi.org/10.1515/ling.2005.43.6.1105}},
doi = {{10.1515/ling.2005.43.6.1105}},
volume = {{43}},
year = {{2005}},
}